What is the connection between artistic expression and the joy of living? How can one best live a literary life? This book is a collection of small word-projects. Each examines a book, a moment, a story that helps to deepen the author's literary adv...
One day, a writer in Japan receives a letter from a young fan who is dying from a mysterious disease. The young fan, Aya, gives the writer a challenge -- come to Nagasaki and help find seven pieces of a statue. If you can help me do this simple thing, she tells him, you will have cured me. What the writer soon finds out is that finding the seven pieces means telling the stories of seven unique individuals: a politician, a soldier, a folk hero, a dancer, an AI, a writer, and the story of Aya herself.
Intimate Details
Any great piece of writing is built on the strength of its details. I've always considered intimate details to be a weakness of mine. If Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the master of the intimate detail, I am a clueless Mr. Bean.
That being said, I tried extra hard to make some details of "Statues in the Cloud" stand out.
The Head of Mary in Urakami Cathedral
When you go to see the "Head of Mary" statue in Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, this is what you will see.
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The shrine for the statue is about 3 to 4 feet above your head behind a red velvet rope. The head itself is a small wooden statue, two meters in height. The right cheek and hair is charred. As is the chin and nose. The eyes are hollow.
The word "heiwa" is written above the shrine: peace. There are two fake roses to the side. (I neglected to write in my notes whether they are on each side or one the sides.)
For some reason, I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the actual statue, but I was able to grab some postcards of the statue.
Here is what it said:
The head of Mary is also called "The Sacred Mary"( 聖母像). The statue was a two-meter high wooden carving, based on a painting by Murillo in the 17th century. Picture's name in Japanese: 無原罪の聖母の御宿り(Immaculate Conception of our Lady - one possible translation; or Virgin Mary of the Camp/ or Virgin Mary of the Rosary). It was made in Spain and donated to Urakami Cathedral by Mr. D Ulibarri, the Spanish Ambassador in served in Japan in the 1930s. The small memorial for the head was built on August 9, 2005 -- the 60 year memorial of the bombing.
